If the starter card cut after the discards is a jack, the dealer immediately scores 2 points for his heels — also called his nibs. Any suit of jack counts.
His heels is a bonus for the dealer only. Once both players have discarded to the crib, a starter card is cut from the deck. If it’s a jack — any suit — the dealer pegs 2 points on the spot, before any cards are played.
Those 2 points count right away, so his heels can win the game for a dealer sitting at 119 or 120. The American Cribbage Congress glossary confirms the 2-point bonus and that it can win the game.
Heels or nobs?
The two jack bonuses are easy to mix up:
- His heels: the starter is a jack. The dealer scores 2, at once.
- His nobs: you hold the jack that matches the starter’s suit. You score 1 when hands are counted; see what his nobs is.
The same jack can’t also score nobs: nobs is for holding the jack that matches the starter’s suit, and the starter can’t match itself. The non-dealer never scores heels, whatever the starter is.
How often it happens
Four of the 52 cards are jacks, so the starter is a jack about once every 13 hands. That makes his heels worth about 0.15 points a hand to the dealer, a small edge on top of owning the crib.
On Trindo
It is scored automatically the moment the starter is turned, and the game log records it as “scores 2 for his heels” under the dealer’s name. For what happens next, read the full two-player cribbage rules.